Portia Zvavahera

“Harare-based artist Portia Zvavahera paints life-size characters in bold and dramatic configurations, their physical and emotional strain almost palpable on the surface of her large canvases. Moments of distress or pain are pictured in exuberant colors and cheerful patterns, while joy or ecstasy may appear before murky or gloomy backgrounds. Sometimes it is hard to discern whether the people in her compositions are celebrating or mourning, or both; above all the paintings exude the intensity of the characters’ experiences and their deep absorption in the depicted scenes. Zvavahera’s protagonists are mostly women, doing things only women do, like giving birth or mothering their children. Other female figures are involved in traditional and religious rites, such as walking in wedding processions or kneeling in prayer. These individual and communal rituals reflect a blend of indigenous Zimbabwean beliefs and Christian faith and speak of a devotion that is genuine to the artist’s own life and her cultural upbringing…Zvavahera’s rough brushwork, along with her figures’ dynamic gestures, ghostlike faces, and expressive limbs, suggests that she abandons her paintings at the point of highest tension. At times the scenes appear as if painted in haste, as if to capture the pinnacle of drama before it would pass, or before a dream would fade from memory seconds after waking. The artist attempts to seize these moments of unadulterated emotion or subconscious experience before analysis and interpretation—in order to transfer them onto the canvas without loss of subliminal textures. Zvavahera’s use of color is simultaneously sophisticated and intuitive. Many of Zvavahera’s compositions are dance-like and they evoke a rhythm and tonality that is undoubtedly related to music.”

-Bomb Magazine

© Portia Zvavahera, Gara Neni (Stay with me), 2017

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